


Already the World Entire

by theradiointukyshead



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Gen, gratuitous fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5966077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theradiointukyshead/pseuds/theradiointukyshead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz and Jemma through the eye of an annoying neighbor/brother-Jemma-never-asks-for, Lance Hunter (Or: the story of three children growing up in a world like glass, waiting for a supernova.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohfiitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohfiitz/gifts).



> A little present for Jess, who’s always a slut for childhood AUs. Happy birthday to you, one of the most unlikely and miraculous combinations of starstuff I have ever known.
> 
> Title taken from Catch a Body by Ilse Bendorf.

There were a few things in life whose existence Lance Hunter deemed indisputable, a constant, an unwavering truth, something he expected to be there when he woke up every morning: the swing set behind his house. An indulging, unhurried breakfast, his father reading the paper aloud and his mother dropping cubes of sugar into their tea. A girl named Jemma Simmons.

He was eight and she was four when they first met, both chasing a squirrel in their shared, fenceless backyard, him brandishing a Nerf gun and her a magnifier from her toy kit. Neither saw the other one charging headfirst at the poor animal.

It took Lance five minutes to stop Jemma from crying, and another ten to bandage her grazed knees up with his clumsy hands. Afterwards, he shouldered the gun and smugly declared he would never hurt her again, to which she just muttered with all the disgruntled indignation of a toddler that he was the brother she had never asked for in the first place.

“Ah, not the brother you want, maybe,” he corrected, poking at her with the muzzle of his gun, “but the one you need.”

*

They merely tolerated each other at most.

It was a bit odd, a guy like him hanging out with a girl half his age, but they didn’t really have any friends. He was abrasive and she was just downright strange, so in the end they held on to each other. Golden afternoons found her waddling through the grass chasing his half-deflated football, while he huffed impatiently and complained that she was the worst goalie to ever walk the earth. She, in turn, made him catch crickets and fireflies, and even though he made sure the world was aware of his belief that anything with more than four legs shouldn’t exist, he did humor her with surprisingly moderate grumbling.  She kept the insects in little mason jars with a hole poked through the lid, sometimes releasing one into his backpack when he was being annoying.

His last year in primary school was the smell of earth and backyard football and his rickety swing set under the tired twilit sky and tiny hands smearing dirt all over his pants, and the realization that Jemma Simmons was much, much smarter than children in the same age group.

His primary school was next to her preschool, which were three blocks from where they lived, so her parents put him in charge of walking her home. When he arrived, backpack slung over one shoulder, a bunch of kids were pelting pebbles at her. _Freak_ , they hissed. _Freak. Freak. Freak_. Jemma swatted their attack with her bare hands, looking angry and on the verge of tears.

Kids didn’t know any better. That was why they were always so goddamn cruel. Lance gritted his teeth and stepped in front of her.

“Let’s go home, Jemma. I need my goalie,” he said, towing her away from the playground by her wrist.

The girl stared at him, wide-eyed, confused. “You said I was terrible.”

He threw a sharp glare over his shoulders, at the bullies who were now cowering because he towered over every last one of them. Finally, looking back to her, he sighed, “I know.”

*

He was in Year Seven and she Year Five (she skipped two years of school, the nerd), when she barreled into him, all chestnut hair and jittering excitement.

“Lance, Lance, Lance,” she chirped, and he cringed at her energy but there was a certain fondness in his grievance. “Tomorrow Miss Weaver will bring us a new friend. She says he’s really smart.”

“Like Jemma-smart, or just plain-boring-smart?”

She scrunched up her nose. “Jemma-smart minus one.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“You should be,” she gasped indignantly, pinching his forearm. “He’s the same age as me. Miss Weaver tells me he’s – and I quote – ‘a prodigy, just like you.’”

His name – Lance later found out – was Leopold Fitz, and if he was anything, he was a punk.

Thursday afternoon, for instance, Lance arrived at Jemma’s school to find her sulking by the swing set, staring at a scrawny kid who was folding paper planes at the bottom of the slide.

“That Leopold Fitz?” he motioned to the boy with his head.

“Just Fitz,” she corrected. “I’ve been following him around for days, hoping he would talk to me, but he never does.”

“Well, I don’t like ‘Just Fitz’ already.”

“It’s not his fault. Maybe I’m just annoying.”

Beyond them, the afternoon drifted by in its nonchalance, and her soft, round eyes were a hazy tinge of sadness. Lance clenched and unclenched his fists, dropped to his knees and grabbed her shoulders. “You’re Jemma Simmons. A boy upsets you, you take a magnifier and set his stuff on fire. But you never _ever_ let him feel bad about yourself.”

Jemma looked up to meet his solemn gaze. He cleared his throat and gave her an easy smile, before the tenderness caught up with him. “Now go wait for me by the bike rack. I’ll be right with you.”

Across the little playground, Fitz watched the pair of them with curious eyes. Lance waited until Jemma was out of sight before marching to the boy. He crossed his arms, all imposing.

“See that girl who just left? She’s my...” _Sister_ , his brain supplied helpfully. He rocked back and forth on his heels as if to chase away the thought. “...neighbor. She wants to be your friend and you’re blanking her.”

The boy clambered to his feet. There was something almost feverish in the way his face lit up. “She wants to be my friend? Really?”

“Yeah, why are you –”

“I’ve been testing with different designs for days,” the boy held up his paper plane, cutting Lance off, “waiting until I can make one good enough for her to notice me.”

Lance nearly burst out laughing. “Is that why you haven’t talked to her?”

“Yes, but I’m almost done now! Can you please give it to her and tell her that I want to be her friend too?”

Fitz hunkered down to give the plane a few finishing touches. He had hands like birds, Lance noted, hands that were restless and always in search of flight against the long afternoon shadows. Children like him, children with birds for hands and eyes like glass, were born homesick for the sky. Lance’s thoughts flitted to Jemma in their backyard kingdom, pointing a sextant into the night and counting arcseconds of stars. She and Fitz, they carried the same homesickness.

Lance’s expression softened. “You know what? Why don’t you give it to her yourself?”

*

Jemma was thirteen and Lance seventeen when she blazed into his kitchen and sank into the seat next to him. He shoved his homework aside, eager for a distraction, as she reached for an apple and bit down with enough spite to turn it poisonous.

“We got partnered up in Chem, can you believe it?” grumbled Jemma. She didn’t even need to specify who it was for him to know she was talking about Fitz.

The past five years saw Jemma’s and Fitz’s friendship blossom into a kind of effortless familiarity, the kind that involved fondness and bickering of equal fervor. As a result, Lance lost his goalie, but at the same time nobody asked him to touch squiggly things with more than four legs anymore. It made sense, them no longer being playmates, but they were still always there, ready to yak each other’s ears off about everything in life. A constant. A homing beacon.

A home.

Lance leaned back on his chair to watch her with amusement. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset, Jemma. Fitz is a genius. Who wouldn’t want him as a partner?”

“He never does his bloody homework!” she all but threw her hands up. “If he wasn’t so smart, he would’ve flunked all his classes a long time ago. I swear if my grade suffers in any way, I will kill him.”

“I’ll hide the body and corroborate your alibi,” Lance offered, and Jemma couldn’t help but smile because of course he would. Of course he would.

*

As it turned out, Lance didn’t have to. Instead, he climbed onto her balcony and slapped a thick textbook against her window, grinning dopily.

“I’ve found a way to make Fitz do his homework,” he announced as soon as Jemma let him in. “So in AS Psych today we learned about this guy, Ivan Pavlov –”

“Classical conditioning, yes.” She crossed her arms, staring at him through narrowed eyes in a way that made it clear she was onto his plan. “Go on.”

He shot her a withering look. “What’s the point? You already know what I’m about to say.”

“Then you already know I am _not_ going to condition Fitz into doing his homework. He’s not a dog. He’s my best friend.”

“So you don’t want to help your best friend develop a good work ethic? Fine. Have at it.” Lance shrugged. “But Fitz is hitting puberty nicely and I would hate to bury his body when you inevitably go for his throat.”

Jemma huffed and motioned for him to sit down. He gave a fist pump and dove for the bean bag next to her bed.

“So,” she heaved a sigh, “how are we going to do this?”

*

Thirteen-year-old boys, according to Lance, were motivated by either porn or food. (He later pointed out that this preference wouldn’t change with age, and Jemma hit him with a wooden spoon.) So Jemma set out to feed Fitz Hershey’s Kisses every time they opened up their homework. It worked wonders, and by the end of the semester they both topped their GCSE Chemistry class despite being the youngest among everyone. One unfortunate side effect was that Fitz salivated a lot whenever he did his homework, but Jemma didn’t have the heart to tell him why.

*

It snuck up on Lance, the subtle change in how these kids were together, like the way stars quietly amassed helium over eons before they went supernova. One summer day of dropping Mentos into Coke and scribbling on the wings of paper planes, one summer night of nuclear fusion at the heart of a red giant. All of a sudden Jemma was fourteen and, sitting across from her on the back porch, Lance wondered if she knew she was doodling the constellation Leo along the margin of her notebook.

_Ah_ , Lance mused as he half-assedly skimmed over his A Level practice tests, _they all have to grow up somehow._

February and the night was surprisingly not frigid, Lance nicked a beer from his dad for a quick study break on the balcony. That was when he caught two figures perched on the roof of Jemma’s house. Fitz was tinkering with a spyglass, while Jemma read under a flashlight. They didn’t talk, just sat there each doing their own thing. Here was the pure pleasure of being in each other’s company, all its simplicity and all its intricacy. Lance took a swig from the bottle and hummed his favorite song, watching them with a sort of idle interest.

“Let’s go inside.” Jemma was the first to speak up, nudging Fitz with her elbow. “I’m cold. My fingers can’t even flip the pages anymore.”

The boy turned to her. The spyglass shoved hastily inside his jacket, he took both her hands in his and breathed onto them. The warm air curled around her fingers, rippling into the sky like auroras, and she dipped her head but didn’t slip away from his hold. 

“Did you know,” he murmured, “the second law of thermodynamics says in a closed system –”

“– heat will always flow from high temperature to low temperature,” she finished for him.

“You get cold because you are constantly trying to warm up the universe.”

“And you warm me up,” she said, “when the cold becomes too much to bear.”

It was strangely intimate, these two kids with soft touches and softer eyes, and Lance knew it was coming, could feel it in the air, that a supernova was about to light up the sky. He grinned easily before downing the rest of his beer.

With a hand cupped around his mouth, he aimed for the roof and bellowed, “NERDS!”

*

The night Lance exploded from the pressure of impending tests and college applications, Jemma showed up with Oreos and an empty mason jar.

“Come on, it’s April. Let’s go catch some fireflies,” she chirped. If she saw his trashed bedroom and raw knuckles, she didn’t say anything.

In the end, Jemma was the one doing the catching while Lance just sat there munching on Oreos and watching her run barefoot across the dew-stained grass. _It’s sort of what she does_ , he thought with wry amusement as he twisted another cookie open, _look up and chase pinpoints of light through the dark._

She plopped down next to him after a while, unfolding her hands to reveal a single firefly with a triumphant smile. He opened the mason jar and held it toward her.

“The Yanks got it right with the word ‘firefly,’ I’ll grant them that,” he divulged. “It’s a nice word to say. We on the other hand just call it ‘glow worm.’”

She nodded as she wiped away a sweat. “It’s all easy and smooth on the tongue. That’s why I always call it that. Besides, this little guy is definitely a firefly; female glow worms can’t fly anyway.” She handed the jar back to him. “And now he’s yours.”

“But you caught him.”

“Consider it a gift for all the times you swallowed your disgust and caught bugs for me,” she shrugged and snatched an Oreo from his hand. “And for all the times you feel lost, like you’re feeling right now, so that it will guide you home.”

He snorted. “ _And ignite your bones_.”

She joined in now. “ _And I will try to fix you_.”

Their laughter eventually diffused into the quiet of night. Lance held the jar up and examined its minuscule occupant. “Fitz is right,” he told her, but his eyes were still on the firefly so that he wouldn’t have to look at her. Sentiments were, after all, not his strong suit. “Your tiny body really is always trying to warm up the universe.”

“Yeah, well, I’d like to think of universe as a relative term.” Jemma tilted her head up to the sky. “Sometimes it’s all that’s above us. Sometimes it takes the form of a gross eighteen-year-old boy who’s scared of bugs and doesn’t know what to do with his life.”

Lance didn’t know how to respond to that, so he cleared his throat and fixated on the little firefly again, which was now thrashing against the glass. “You used to have a dozen of these lined up on your windowsill. Never understood why you would release the bugs the very next day. Still don’t, actually.”

“You know how the cheesy saying goes. ‘If you love something, set it free’ and all that.”

“Well that means it’s time to let this little guy go, then.”

He gave a soft tap against the glass wall before unscrewing the lid, and they watched their firefly take flight to chart little constellations of its own, ebbing, blinking, its trail of golden light coalescing into the star-kissed backyard.

*

The summer before college, Lance caught Fitz trying to fight back two kids in the alley behind his old high school. The operative word here was “trying,” really, because these kids must have been a good few years older than Fitz and maybe twice his size. Still, Fitz kept on, elbows and fury, until the other kids knocked him down. Every time they did, he would scramble to get up again, and the vicious cycle started anew.

Lance wasn’t that much bigger than those bullies, but he could hold his own in a fight. He yanked one kid away from Fitz and surprised him with a sharp right hook. Caught off guard, the other one charged blindly forward only to double over in pain as Lance kneed him in that tender spot just above his stomach. Fists clenched tightly, Lance delivered a knockout uppercut. The kid’s teeth rattled, and he crumbled to the ground.

“You really need to pick your battles, mate,” Lance sighed, when they were perched atop the hood of his beat-up car in the mostly deserted parking lot. “You’re walking a fine line between courage and recklessness.”

Fitz pressed a bag of frozen peas Lance had bought from around the corner to the lump on his head, wincing as he did so. “I _am_ picking my battles. We’ll all be in Year 13 next year. Technically we’re equals.”

Lance was about to smack him upside the head for being a smartass, but then his eyes widened. “Year 13? Really? You’re skipping another year?”

“Yeah, Jemma and I.”

He sighed again. _Exactly how smart are these kids anyway?_ Then, he clapped a hand on Fitz’s back. “Well, if anything, I’m glad at least you two have each other.”

Fitz grinned through a nasty cut on his lip. “Me too.”

“Good, because I trust you to be there for her when I’m off to college.” Solemnly, he grabbed Fitz by his shoulders and leveled their gaze. “Or I will have your ass handed to you on a platter for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

Fitz nodded. The gravity in his expression was enough to convince Lance. They leaned back against his car, and Fitz fiddled with the bag of peas for a while before looking up to meet Lance’s eyes. “She’s going to miss you a lot, you know,” he said in earnest. “You’re the only sibling that she has.”

Ignoring the warmth that thrummed softly against his ribcage, Lance shook his head. “I’m not her brother. I’m just a neighbor who cares.”

*

Lance knocked back another one of his dad’s beers. All around him were cardboard boxes, all sealed, labelled, and stacked. He hummed and looked at the moon, lazily trailing his gaze after its light as it avalanched in from the open window, the only thing to illuminate his otherwise dark room. Something caught his eyes, and he crawled underneath the bed to retrieve –

A half-deflated football.

Memories of a little girl waddling after it in the slow blinks of afternoon besieged his heart. _God_ , he was going to miss her like hell, wasn’t he?

Balancing the ball on one hand, he went outside. Across from his balcony, Jemma was scribbling into a notebook, the spyglass he had seen in Fitz’s hand a while ago now clutched tightly in hers. It was a gift from Fitz when he had been messing around with refractors, designed to tide her over until _one day I’ll build you a real telescope, a Cassegrain reflector, no less, like the Hubble. One day I’ll build the Hubble and bring the cosmos to you._

Homesickness for the sky really was an incurable disease. Apparently so was love.

“Jemma,” Lance called, holding up the ball when she turned to him. “One more match for old time’s sake?”

Somewhere between Lance’s sixth and eighth goals (and the game was, by the way, only five minutes in), Jemma threw her hands up and conceded defeat.

“Seems you’re still the world’s worst goalie,” Lance laughed as he sank down next to her on the wooden steps of the back porch, but she didn’t respond. Instead, her hands fidgeted. He noticed how those nails were sinking deeper into her flesh. Whatever it was that she was upset about, it certainly wasn’t his teasing.

He exhaled sharply. “You know I’ll be back right? It’s not like I’m off to war.”

“You were my entire childhood, Lance,” whispered Jemma, after a long pause. “Fitz may be my best friend, but you were my entire childhood. And sure, you annoy me half the time, rub your Cheetos fingers on my clothes, use me as an armrest, and when we play video games I always end up with Luigi – ”

“Your point is?”

“You have your own brand of caring. You protect me because to you I’m not a freak, I’m not a genius, I’m just a kid who literally stumbles into your life, and somehow we decide we like each other enough to stick around.”

There it was again, the warmth seeping through his ribs.

“Oh no, you see, I absolutely loathe you,” he gasped, indignant. “I just hide it under so many layers of charm that I’ve managed to fool you this long.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Can you hide it again? It’s quite annoying.”

They bumped shoulders, and she reached over to smear her dirt-caked hands all over his shirt.

“Hey Jemma.” Lance was serious all of a sudden.

“Hmm?”

He leaned back and tilted his head to look at her. “Hand over heart, we’re going to be alright.”

*

December after Jemma and Fitz both turned sixteen, and Lance found himself caught in the middle of a vicious snowball attack at sundown. Maybe he’d taken one too many on the head, because how he ended up here, he had no idea. All he did was pull the Christmas cracker, place the paper crown on Jemma’s head and call her “Princess.” Then Jemma shoved him out the back door, dragged Fitz out with her, and declared war on –

_Oh, that’s how._

Another snowball hit him square in the face. He turned and glared at Fitz, not sure if he should be feeling miffed or impressed with his aim.

“It’s physics, Lance,” Fitz shrugged, before crouching down to prepare for the next attack.

He was too busy scheming Fitz’s demise, he forgot Jemma had snuck up behind him. Without any warning, she shoved a handful of snow down the back of his shirt. Flailing, he let loose a string of colorful vocabulary.

Meanwhile, Fitz had already hurled another snowball at Lance, but because the boy had failed to account for Lance’s less-than-dignified little dance, the snowball narrowly missed its mark. Instead, it hit Jemma with enough force for her to stagger backward.

Jemma made a sound that was suspiciously close to a growl. Her brows furrowed, she took off running and tackled Fitz onto the ground. But this wasn’t a movie where the rational thing for them to do was to lean in for a kiss while the music swelled. She simply rolled off him, helped him get up, and dusted the snow off his clothes.

But there were the subtle things too. Her hand lingering a little too long on his waist, his fingers ghosting over her hair and picking out tiny snowflakes, dusk diffusing in the chiaroscuro of their smiles.  

Looking at them, Lance oddly felt like an intruder. He turned and headed back to the house, idly wondering if they had even kissed yet as he went.

With a smile on his face, he decided that it didn’t matter anyway. Too many hours and paper planes and distant comets had flown past for him to believe there was anything less than cosmic about this singular act of _being_. It was all a matter of eventuality, really. Besides, he had spent enough time with these nerds to know that just because the rest of the universe had yet to see it, didn’t mean that a supernova hadn’t happened already, somewhere far off, once upon a star.

 

 


	2. Epilogue

They boarded the 7:54 AM train on a pleasant morning. Lance settled into his seat and threw his head back, watching distorted flickers of brick and metal dance on the window as the train pulled out of the station.

It took more than five hours to arrive at their destination. He couldn’t sleep, so he spent most of his time staring out the window, at the ever-fickle landscape of Northern England. The train lazily crossed an old stone bridge high above a valley awash in the pale gold of autumn. For a second he felt suspended like a bird mid-flight.

Across from him, his wife leaned in close and held his gaze. “Lance, are you nervous?” she asked. The morning haze fell into her eyes, haloed on her long blonde hair, and she was the most beautiful woman to ever exist. His heart stuttered at the mere sight.

He shook his head and gave her too-bright smile. “No, not at all.”

Which was, as it turned out, not true.

It was just past 4:00 PM. Lance tugged at the stiff collar of his dress shirt, picked at the lint on his pants, anything to keep his brain from going on an emotional overdrive. So far he had done a pretty decent job.

But when the boy standing at the altar unfolded a paper plane and read his vows to the girl in white, Lance just _lost_ it. Before he could do anything, an audible whimper escaped his mouth.

He swore he could hear Jemma snicker all the way from here.

*

The music suddenly changed, jolting Lance from the drowsy tranquility of a slow dance. Bobbi looked over his shoulder and smiled, her grip on his hand loosened, her graceful steps halted.

“What is it?”

“It’s time to switch partners.”

He twirled around. Jemma was beaming at the pair of them, suffused with the rosy glow of one too many cocktails. The soft yellow light glinted off sequins and silk panels of her snow white wedding gown. Just a step behind her, Fitz stood, hands in his pockets. The bowtie had come undone, a lipstick stain on the pulse of his neck.  He grinned easily and tugged Jemma to his side.

“The bride requested your company,” he announced to Lance, sounding dazed when he said the word _bride_.

Bobbi untangled herself from Lance and lightly shoved him away. “Please, take him. I’ll even throw in some coupons for your next purchase.” Then, to Fitz, she said, “Come with me. I’ll babysit you for a while.”

Bobbi took off with Fitz to the dance floor. It was rather comical, her with her high heels and him with his general Fitz-ness, drifting to the mellifluous melody of the song, but they made it look effortless somehow. She grinned down at him when they missed a beat and he stepped on her shoe.

Jemma turned away from the sight and shook her head. “There’s no easy way to say this, but she’s too good for you.”

“Tell me about it.”

Lance held out his arms, and she slipped into them. The hem of her gown brushed against his feet with each feathery step, wispy like sun-streaked clouds. She sang along to the music, and he wrinkled his nose. “You can never do Chris Martin justice.”

“Like you can talk. You sang this song nonstop the winter of its release. Grated it out, for that matter. Christmas dinner was a nightmare.’

“It’s a good song though,” he huffed.

Her expression softened. “It is.”

He pulled back to look at her. In her eyes he saw flecks of gold and a little girl with scraped knees who chased bugs and sucked at football and taught him to look up at the stars. _You’re my entire childhood too. I hope you know that._

The orchestration started to thin, until only the simple sound of an acoustic guitar was left. Lance cleared his throat and caught the last lines. “ _Through chaos as it swirls_ ,” he sang.

“ _It’s us against the world_.”

The song ended, and they broke apart. She tucked a strand of hair back and smiled at him. “Thanks for the dance, Lance.”

“Anything for my...” _Neighbor_ , his brain supplied helpfully. He rocked back and forth on his heels as if to chase away the thought. “...sister.”

*

The England-bound train left Perth station around midnight. They kept their eyes glued to the carriage window, looking on as Jemma and Fitz waved at them from the platform. Bobbi settled into her seat first, but Lance lingered long enough to catch Fitz turning and pressing a kiss on Jemma’s forehead. It was the kind of weightlessness he’d only seen at the tail end of dreams.

That night he stayed awake to watch the train chase one bright star along the coast and across valleys. Its sudden appearance, its unchanging parallax, all telltale signs of a supernova. He chuckled and held out a hand underneath the starlight, his vision awash with shades of nebulous silver.

“Took a while for your light to get here, huh?” he whispered to the supernova, and it blinked back at him. “Well it was worth the wait.”


End file.
